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Rudy Giuliani is in contempt of court in $148 million defamation case
Business |
2025/01/05 07:59
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Rudy Giuliani was found in contempt of court Monday for failing to properly respond to requests for information as he turned over assets to satisfy a $148 million defamation judgment granted to two Georgia election workers.
Judge Lewis J. Liman ruled after hearing Giuliani testify for a second day at a contempt hearing called after lawyers for the election workers said the former New York City mayor had failed to properly comply with requests for evidence over the last few months.
Liman said Giuliani “willfully violated a clear and unambiguous order of this court” when he “blew past” a Dec. 20 deadline to turn over evidence that would help the judge decide at a trial later this month whether Giuliani can keep a Palm Beach, Florida, condominium as his residence or must turn it over because it is deemed a vacation home.
Because Giuliani failed to reveal the full names of his doctors, a complete list of them, or of his other professional services providers, the judge said he will conclude at trial that none of them were in Florida or had been changed after Jan. 1, 2024. That was the date Giuliani says he established Palm Beach as his permanent residence.
Liman also excluded Giuliani from offering testimony about emails or text messages to establish that his homestead was in Florida.
The judge said Giuliani produced only a dozen and a half “cherry picked” documents and no phone records, emails or texts related to his homestead. He said he can also make inferences during the trial about “gaps” in evidence that resulted from Giuliani’s failure to turn over materials.
Liman said he would withhold judgment on other possible sanctions.
On Friday, Giuliani testified for about three hours in Liman’s Manhattan courtroom, but the judge permitted him to finish testifying remotely on Monday for over two hours from his Palm Beach condominium. By the time the judge issued his oral ruling, Giuliani was no longer present at all.
Joseph Cammarata, Giuliani’s attorney, noted in an email afterward that the election workers were not in the courtroom either and he called the outcome “no surprise.”
“This case is about lawfare and the weaponization of the legal system in New York City,” he said.
Cammarata said the state criminal case against President-elect Donald Trump and the civil litigation against Giuliani were “very similar. It’s the left wing Democrats trying to use liberal Judges in New York to win when they should lose on the merits.”
At the start of the hearing, Giuliani appeared before an American flag backdrop, which he said he uses for a program he conducts over the internet, but the judge told him to change it to a plain background. He also at one point held up his grandfather’s heirloom pocket watch and said he was ready to relinquish.
Giuliani conceded that he sometimes did not turn over everything requested in the case because he believed what was being sought was overly broad, inappropriate or even a “trap” set by lawyers for the plaintiffs.
He also said he sometimes had trouble turning over information regarding his assets because of numerous criminal and civil court cases requiring him to produce factual information.
Liman labeled one of Giuliani’s claims “preposterous” and said that being suspicious of the intent of lawyers for the election workers was “not an excuse for violating court orders.”
Giuliani, 80, said the demands made it “impossible to function in an official way” about 30% to 40% of the time.
After the ruling, the former mayor issued a statement through his publicist saying it was “tragic to watch as our justice system has been turned into a total mockery, where we have charades instead of actual hearings and trials.”
The election workers’ lawyers say Giuliani has displayed a “consistent pattern of willful defiance” of Liman’s October order to give up assets after he was found liable in 2023 for defaming their clients by falsely accusing them of tampering with ballots during the 2020 presidential election. |
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Small businesses brace themselves for potentially disruptive TikTok ban
Business |
2025/01/01 19:40
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A looming TikTok ban could affect the millions of small businesses that use the short-video social media app to help them grow their business.
Desiree Hill, owner of Crown’s Corner Mechanic in Conyers, Georgia, started her business solo as a mobile mechanic. Sharing videos of her work on TikTok helped spread the word and she became so popular she was able to open a 9,000 square foot brick and mortar shop with five employees 18 months ago.
“Every day I get at least two to three customers that have seen me on TikTok, watched my videos and wanted to become a customer,” she said.
Though TikTok has been around only since 2016, small business owners use the platform in a variety of ways, from growing a customer base to advertising and marketing, as well as selling goods directly from the site.
According to TikTok’s own estimates, small businesses on TikTok would lose more than $1 billion in revenue in a single month if the ban goes into effect.
The Justice Department ordered the app’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell TikTok or face a U.S. ban by Jan. 19, citing security concerns. The Supreme Court will take up the matter in January. President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office Jan. 20, has asked the Supreme Court for a delay.
If a ban does occur, small businesses will have to migrate to other platforms to find their customers. Instagram Reels, SnapChat and YouTube Shorts are alternatives. The good news is brands likely already have a presence there. But it may be harder to reach teens that have made TikTok their preferred social media app.
Another alternative is to build a strong database of customers that opt in to providing contact emails or phone numbers. That lets owners reach out directly to customers with promotions and other marketing messages.
But Crown Corner Mechanic’s Hill said she is worried that other sites may not have the reach that TikTok does. She has a presence on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, but it’s not the same, she said. |
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Court will hear arguments over Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care
Business |
2024/12/01 11:57
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Advocates for transgender rights are turning to a conservative-dominated Supreme Court after a presidential election in which Donald Trump and his allies promised to roll back protections for transgender people.
The justices on Wednesday are taking up the issue of gender-affirming care for transgender minors, which has been banned by Tennessee and 25 other Republican-led states.
The fight over whether transgender adolescents can access puberty blockers and hormonal treatments is part of a broader effort to regulate the lives of transgender people, including which sports competitions they can join and which bathrooms they can use.
Trump backed a national ban on such care as part of his 2024 campaign in which he demeaned and mocked transgender people.
In its waning days, the Biden administration, along with families of transgender adolescents, will appeal to the justices to strike down the Tennessee ban as unlawful sex discrimination and protect the constitutional rights of vulnerable Americans.
“The stakes are high, of course, for transgender adolescents, but also for the parents who are watching their children suffer, who are just trying to do right by their kids,” Chase Strangio, who represents the families at the Supreme Court, said in an interview. Strangio, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, will be the first openly transgender person to argue before the high court.
A lawyer for Tennessee will argue that the “life-altering gender-transition procedures” are risky and unproven and that it’s the state’s role to protect children.
Trump nominated three justices in his first term who pushed the court in a more conservative direction that included the decision in 2022 overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, which had protected abortion rights for nearly 50 years.
Yet one of Trump’s appointees, Justice Neil Gorsuch, also authored a ruling in 2020 that protected LGBTQ people from discrimination in the workplace under federal civil rights law.
The administration and transgender families both rely on that decision to bolster their arguments.
After Trump takes office on Jan. 20, 2025, it’s possible the new administration could weigh in on the case, which is not expected to be decided until the spring.
There are about 300,000 people between age 13 and 17, and 1.3 million adults who identify as transgender in the United States, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. The Williams Institute is a think tank that researches sexual orientation and gender identity demographics to inform laws and public policy decisions.
Most Republican-controlled states have adopted a ban similar to the one in Tennessee, and those laws mostly are in effect, despite legal challenges. The Tennessee case is the first time the nation’s top court will consider the constitutionality of the bans.
Sivan Kotler-Berkowitz, a 20-year-old college student in Massachusetts who is transgender, said his life would have been very different if he were just a few years younger and living in one of the states.
“These bans are denying people the opportunity to live and excel,” he said in an interview. “There are thousands of transgender youth across the country that are thriving just like me because we’ve had the love and understanding of our families and because we’ve had access to proper care.”
The bans in Tennessee and elsewhere have put families in the position of deciding whether to travel for ongoing health care, go without or wait until their children turn 18.
Erin Friday, a leader of Our Duty, an international group that supports the bans on gender-affirming care for minors, said the case is going to be as important as Roe v. Wade. She said upholding the Tennessee law would bolster the cases for the laws restricting sports participation and bathroom use.
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Court backs Texas over razor wire installed on US-Mexico border
Business |
2024/11/25 11:02
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A federal appeals court Wednesday ruled that Border Patrol agents cannot cut razor wire that Texas installed on the U.S.-Mexico border in the town of Eagle Pass, which has become the center of the state’s aggressive measures to curb migrant crossings.
The decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is a victory for Texas in a long-running rift over immigration policy with the Biden administration, which has also sought to remove floating barriers installed on the Rio Grande.
Texas has continued to install razor wire along its roughly 1,200-mile (1,900 kilometers) border with Mexico over the past year. In a 2-1 ruling, the court issued an injunction blocking Border Patrol agents from damaging the wire in Eagle Pass.
“We continue adding more razor wire border barrier,” Republican Gov. Greg Abbott posted on the social platform X in response to the ruling. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Wednesday.
Some migrants have been injured by the sharp wire, and the Justice Department has argued the barrier impedes the U.S. government’s ability to patrol the border, including coming to the aid of migrants in need of help. Texas contended in the lawsuit originally filed last year that federal government was “undermining” the state’s border security efforts by cutting the razor wire.
The ruling comes ahead of President-elect Donald Trump returning to office and pledging a crackdown on immigration. Earlier this month, a Texas official offered a parcel of rural ranchland along the U.S.-Mexico border to use as a staging area for potential mass deportations.
Arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border have dropped 40% from an all-time high in December. U.S. officials mostly credit Mexican vigilance around rail yards and highway checkpoint. |
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PA high court orders counties not to count disputed ballots in US Senate race
Business |
2024/11/18 06:25
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Pennsylvania’s state Supreme Court on Monday weighed in on a flashpoint amid ongoing vote counting in the U.S. Senate election between Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and Republican David McCormick, ordering counties not to count mail-in ballots that lack a correct handwritten date on the return envelope.
The order is a win for McCormick and a loss for Casey as the campaigns prepare for a statewide recount and press counties for favorable ballot-counting decisions while election workers are sorting through thousands of provisional ballots.
McCormick’s campaign called it a “massive setback” for Casey.
The Democratic-majority high court’s order reiterates the position it took previously that the ballots shouldn’t be counted in the election, a decision that Republicans say several Democratic-controlled counties nevertheless challenged.
In a statement, Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said a lack of legal clarity had surrounded the ballots, putting county officials in a position where they were “damned if they did and damned if they didn’t — likely facing legal action no matter which decision they made on counting.”
It comes amid a gust of fresh litigation in recent days filed by both campaigns, contesting the decisions of about a dozen counties over whether or not to count thousands of provisional ballots.
Casey’s campaign says the provisional ballots shouldn’t be rejected for garden-variety errors, like a polling place worker forgetting to sign it. Republicans say the law is clear that the ballots must be discarded.
The Associated Press called the race for McCormick last week, concluding that not enough ballots remained to be counted in areas Casey was winning for him to take the lead.
As of Monday, McCormick led by about 17,000 votes out of almost 7 million ballots counted — inside the 0.5% margin threshold to trigger an automatic statewide recount under Pennsylvania law.
Statewide, the number of mail-in ballots with wrong or missing dates on the return envelope could be in the thousands.
Republicans last week asked the court to bar counties from counting the ballots, saying those decisions violate both the court’s recent orders and its precedent in upholding the requirement in state law that a voter write the date on their mail-in ballot’s return envelope.
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North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein is elected as the state’s governor
Business |
2024/11/10 07:05
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North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein was elected governor on Tuesday, defeating Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and maintaining Democratic leadership of the chief executive’s office in a state where Republicans have recently controlled the legislature and appeals courts.
Stein, a Harvard-trained lawyer, former state senator and the state’s chief law enforcement officer since 2017, will succeed fellow Democrat Roy Cooper, who was term-limited from seeking reelection. He will be the state’s first Jewish governor. Robinson’s campaign was greatly hampered by a damning report in September that he had posted messages on an online pornography website, including that he was a “black NAZI.”
Democrats have held the governor’s mansion for all but four years since 1993, even as the GOP has held legislative majorities since 2011.
As with Cooper’s time in office, a key task for Stein likely will be to use his veto stamp to block what he considers extreme right-leaning policies. Cooper had mixed success on that front during his eight years as governor.
Otherwise, Stein’s campaign platform largely followed Cooper’s policy goals, including those to increase public school funding, promote clean energy and stop further abortion restrictions by Republicans.
Stein’s campaign dramatically outraised and outspent Robinson, who was seeking to become the state’s first Black governor.
For months Stein and his allies used television ads and social media to remind voters of previous inflammatory comments that Robinson had made about abortion, women and LGBTQ+ people that they said made him too extreme to lead a swing state.
“The people of North Carolina resoundingly embraced a vision that’s optimistic, forward-looking and welcoming, a vision that’s about creating opportunity for every North Carolinian,” Stein told supporters in his victory speech after Cooper introduced him. “We chose hope over hate, competence over chaos, decency over division. That’s who we are as North Carolinians.”
Robinson’s campaign descended into disarray in September when CNN reported that he made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago. In addition to the “black NAZI” comment, Robinson said he enjoyed transgender pornography and slammed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as “worse than a maggot,” according to the report. Robinson denied writing the messages and sued CNN and an individual for defamation in October.
In the days following the report, most of Robinson’s top campaign staff quit, many fellow GOP elected officials and candidates — including presidential nominee Donald Trump — distanced themselves from his campaign and outside money supporting him on the airwaves dried up. The result: Stein spent millions on ads in the final weeks, while Robinson spent nothing.
Stein had a clear advantage among women, young and older voters, moderates and urban and suburban voters, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 3,600 voters in the state. White voters were about evenly divided between Stein and Robinson, while clear majorities of Black voters and Latino voters supported Stein.
Fifteen percent of those who voted for Trump also backed Stein for governor, while just 2% of those who cast ballots for Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris backed Robinson.
Patrick Stemple, 33, a shipping coordinator attending a Trump rally last week in Greensboro, said he voted early for Trump but also chose Stein for governor.
Stemple mentioned both Stein’s ads talking about how he has fought illegal drug trafficking and his dislike for Robinson’s rhetoric. Stemple said the graphic language that CNN reported was used in Robinson’s posts reinforced his decision not to back Robinson.
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What to know about the unprecedented floods that killed more than 200 in Spain
Business |
2024/11/03 06:16
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In a matter of minutes, flash floods caused by heavy downpours in eastern Spain swept away almost everything in their path. With no time to react, people were trapped in vehicles, homes and businesses. Many died and thousands of livelihoods were shattered.
A week later, authorities have recovered 218 bodies — with 213 of them in the eastern Valencia region. Police, firefighters and soldiers continued to search Tuesday for an unknown number of missing people.
In many of the 69 devastated localities, mostly located in the southern outskirts of Valencia city, people still face shortages of basic goods. Water is back to running through pipes but authorities say it is only for cleaning and not fit for drinking. Lines form at impromptu emergency kitchens and food relief stands in streets still covered with mud and debris.
Thousands of volunteers are helping soldiers and police reinforcements with the gargantuan task of cleaning up the mire and the countless wrecked cars. At least 46,000 insurance claims for totaled vehicles had been filed, according to Spain’s Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo.
The ground floors of thousands of homes have been ruined. Inside some of the vehicles that the water washed away or trapped in underground garages, there were still bodies waiting to be identified.
The frustration over the crisis management boiled over on Sunday when a crowd in hard-hit Paiporta hurled mud and other objects at Spain’s royals, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and regional officials when they made their first visit to the epicenter of the flood damage.
The storms concentrated over the Magro and Turia river basins and, in the Poyo canal, produced walls of water that overflowed riverbanks, catching people unaware as they went on with their daily lives on Tuesday evening and early Wednesday.
In the blink of an eye, the muddy water covered roads and railways, and entered houses and businesses in towns and villages on the southern outskirts of Valencia city. Drivers had to take shelter on car roofs, while residents took refuge on higher ground.
Spain’s national weather service said that in the hard-hit locality of Chiva, it rained more in eight hours than it had in the preceding 20 months, calling the deluge “extraordinary.” Other areas on the southern outskirts of Valencia city didn’t get rain before they were wiped out by the wall of water that overflowed the drainage canals.
When authorities sent alerts to mobile phones warning of the seriousness of the flooding and asking people to stay at home, many were already on the road, working or covered in water in low-lying areas or underground garages, which became death traps.
Scientists trying to explain what happened see two likely connections to human-caused climate change. One is that warmer air holds and then dumps more rain. The other is possible changes in the jet stream — the river of air above land that moves weather systems across the globe — that spawn extreme weather.
Climate scientists and meteorologists said the immediate cause of the flooding is called a cut-off lower-pressure storm system that migrated from an unusually wavy and stalled jet stream. That system simply parked over the region and poured rain. This happens often enough that in Spain they call them DANAs, the Spanish acronym for the system, meteorologists said.
And then there is the unusually high temperature of the Mediterranean Sea. It had its warmest surface temperature on record in mid-August, at 28.47 degrees Celsius (83.25 degrees Fahrenheit), said Carola Koenig of the Centre for Flood Risk and Resilience at Brunel University of London.
The extreme weather event came after Spain battled with prolonged droughts in 2022 and 2023. Experts say that drought and flood cycles are increasing with climate change.
“Climate change kills, and now, unfortunately, we are seeing it firsthand,” Sánchez said Tuesday after announcing a 10.6-billion-euro relief package for 78 municipalities. |
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Class action or a representative action is a form of lawsuit in which a large group of people collectively bring a claim to court and/or in which a class of defendants is being sued. This form of collective lawsuit originated in the United States and is still predominantly a U.S. phenomenon, at least the U.S. variant of it. In the United States federal courts, class actions are governed by Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule. Since 1938, many states have adopted rules similar to the FRCP. However, some states like California have civil procedure systems which deviate significantly from the federal rules; the California Codes provide for four separate types of class actions. As a result, there are two separate treatises devoted solely to the complex topic of California class actions. Some states, such as Virginia, do not provide for any class actions, while others, such as New York, limit the types of claims that may be brought as class actions. They can construct your law firm a brand new website, lawyer website templates and help you redesign your existing law firm site to secure your place in the internet. |
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